did you know : dating is a myth, intimacy is a government-sponsored lie and kissing has been debunked as an urban legend. all those couples you’ve seen? they’re fucking with you, dude
*aroace voice* i KNEW IT
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#hahahaha #i can so relate #ace #aroMore you might like
When I think back on the Speak Now album, I get a lump in my throat. I have a feeling it will always be that way, because this period of time was so vibrantly aglow with the last light of the setting sun of my childhood. I made this album, completely self-written, between the ages of 18 and 20. I've spoken about how I feel like those ages are the most emotionally turbulent ones in a persons life. Maybe when I say that, I'm really just talking about myself.
I think they might just be the most idealistic, hopeful years too. At this point in my life, I had released my second album, Fearless. It became the breakthrough moment I'd always dreamt of, one that catapulted my career to new realms of success. It had brought with it a tidal wave of pressures and pitfalls and growing pains. All the while, I was encountering the milestones and checkpoints of normal teenage growth. I had cataclysmic crushes and brushes with heartache. I moved out of my parents' house and set my bags down in a new apartment. I hung photos on my own walls and decorated the space where I would sob and cackle and shatter and dream. Sometimes I felt like a grown up, but a lot of the time I just wanted to time travel back to my childhood bed, where my mom would read stories to me until I fell asleep.
In my darker moments, I was tormented by the doubt that swirled loudly around my ascent and my merits as an artist. I was trying to create a follow up to the most awarded country album in history, while staring directly into the face of intense criticism. I had been widely and publicly slammed for my singing voice and was first encountering the infuriating question that is unfortunately still lobbed at me to this day: does she really write her songs? Spoiler alert: I really, really do.
In the years since, I've developed a thicker skin about public criticism and the cynicism with which some people approach the music I make. At that time, it leveled me. I had these voices in my head telling me that I had the perfect chance and I blew it. I hadn’t been good enough. I had given it all I had and been found wanting.
I wanted to get better, to challenge myself, and to build on my skills as a writer, an artist, and a performer. I didn't want to just be handed respect and acceptance in my field. I wanted to earn it. To try and confront these demons, I underwent extensive vocal training and made a decision that would completely define this album: I decided I would write it entirely on my own. I figured, they couldn't give all the credit to my cowriters if there weren't any. But that posed a new challenge: It really had to be good. If it wasn't, I would be proving my critics right.
I had no idea how much this pain would shape me. That this was the beginning of my series of creative choices made by reacting to setbacks with defiance. That my stubbornness in the face of doubters and dissenters would become my coping mechanism through my entire career from that point forward. This exact pattern of enacting my own form of rebellion when I feel broken is exactly why you're reading these very words, and I'm re-releasing this album now.
I went through my first worldwide scandal (the mic grab seen around the world). I experienced the weirdness of trying to get to know a boy while a swarm of paparazzi surrounds the car. Media contacting my publicist for an official statement on why two teenagers broke up. These are weird experiences to have at any age, but even more surreal when you're 19.
I had the nagging sense that in the most intense moments of my life, I had frozen. I had said nothing publicly. I still don't know if it was out of instinct, not wanting to seem impolite, or just overwhelming fear. But I made sure to say it all in these songs. I decided to call the album Speak Now. It was a play on the speak now or forever hold your peace' moment in weddings, but for me it symbolized a chance to respond to the chatter and commentary around my own life.
Some of these emotional revelations were surprising to people. Some expected anger and instead got compassion and empathy with 'Innocent'. Some expected a kiss-off breakup song but instead got a hand-on-heart apology, 'Back to December. It was an album that was the most precious to me because of its vast extremes. It was unfiltered and potent. In my mind, the saddest song I've ever written is 'Last Kiss'. My most scathing is 'Dear John' and my most wistfully romantic is 'Enchanted'.
I'll be forever proud of setting a goal and seeing it through. I'lI always feel shivers all over when I remember singing 'Long Live' to close the show every night on tour. The outstretched hands of those bright and beautiful faces of the fans. Their support was like an open palm that reached out and helped me up off the ground when others were, frankly, mean.
These days I make my choices for those people, the ones who thought I had been good enough all along. I try to speak my mind when I feel strongly, in the moment I feel it. I'm still idealistic and earnest about the music I make, but I'm less crushed when people mock me for it. I know now that one of the bravest things a person can do is create something with unblinking sincerity, to put it all on the line. I still sometimes wish I was a little kid again in a tiny bed, before I ever grew up.
I always looked at this album as my album, and the lump in my throat expands to a quivering voice as I say this. Thanks to you, dear reader, it finally will be.
I consider this music to be, along with your faith in me, the best thing that's ever been mine.
Yours,
Taylor
Happy Pride Month!
Faust the Crow loves you even more than she did the last 2 years!
first 5 faceless emojis are how your summers gonna go
Magnus Archives fan I see
THIS IS SO FUNNY I'M SORRY
i hope this doesn’t need to be said but just in case
you might have seen people talking about sudowrite and/or their tool storyengine recently
and just like… don’t. don’t do it. don’t try it out just to see what it’s about.
for two main reasons:
1) never feed anything proprietary into a large language model (LLM, eg ChatGPT, google bard, etc.).
this means don’t give it private company information when you’re at work, but also don’t give it your original writing. that’s your work.
because of the way these language models work, anything you feed into it is part of it now. and yeah, the FAQ says they “don’t claim ownership” over anything and yeah, they give you that reassuring bullshit about how unlikely it is that the exact same sentence will be reconstructed—
but that’s not the point.
do you have an unusual way of constructing sentences? a metaphor you like to use? a writing tic that sets you apart from the rest? anything that gives you a unique writing voice?
feed your writing into an LLM, and the model has your voice now. the model can generate text that sounds like it was written by you and someone else can claim it’s theirs because they gave the model a prompt.
don’t feed the model.
2) the other reason is that sudowrite scraped a bunch of omegaverse fic without consent to build their model and that’s a really shitty thing to do, because it means people weren’t given the chance to choose whether or not to feed the model.
don’t feed the model.
also this.
don’t feed the model.
I’ve listened to a podcast where a Media Studies guy explained how AI is not good at things we’re all talking about, but how it’s very good in other areas, e.g. targeted marketing. His thesis was that we’re all waiting for AI to turn on humanity, but the way AI is used today, it is already being used against humans (by corporations).
Also, I think there is a risk to view AI as something like Siri or Alexa. ChatGPT is NOT like that! (Please correct if I’m wrong but) Siri and Alexa work like search engines. You ask them a question, they search for the top answer and give it to you. This is not an unproblematic process and we can talk about how search engines reflect power structures and biases, but you will mostly get an answer that is (mostly) factual, or they will just say they don’t have an answer.
ChatGPT WILL LIE TO YOU WITHOUT BLINKING! This is really important to understand.
Mabel on the tumblr account she made immediately after turning 13: one of the most important things to remember about boybands in that they’re very social! most members can’t make it solo. this is why you should always give them a sleeping area that fits all of them at once, so if one of them wakes up in the middle of the night he has the others to pose with and comfort him back to bed. if he still won’t go back to sleep you can try rocking him to simulate the gentle motion of a tour bus too!
Everyone else on tumblr: haha funny joke *10k notes*
between speak now tv and the barbie movie, july 2023 is truly for teenage girls in their twenties 😭
came here for comfort leaving because everyone else apparently got tickets to the eras tour
did you also feel like katniss everdeen in the hunger games when buying eras tour tickets or is it just me